The Dining Room at The Fryemont Inn

Bryson City was a town of only 400 people in those days, but it was connected to the outside world via the Southern Railroad. Amos and Lillian were both prominent western North Carolina attorneys—Lillian the first female member of the North Carolina Bar Association. Together they owned the logging rights to much of what today is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.They were wealthy people who loved to entertain, and they realized that their beloved mountains would be the ideal place to build a country inn. They hired architect Richard Sharp Smith, who had notably been the supervising architect for Asheville’s Biltmore House, to build their dream.